Dominic Nardi is a political scientist and has published academic articles about politics in Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Blade Runner. N. Trevor Brierly is a literature scholar and software engineer living in Northern Virginia. He has published and presented on Dune, Tolkien, worldbuilding, Shakespeare, and Northrup Frye.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Timothy O'Reilly

Introduction: "A beginning is a very delicate time..."

Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly

Part I. Politics and Power

Dune and the Metanarrative of Power

Edward John Royston

Political Prescience: How Game Theory Solves the Paradox of Foreknowledge

Dominic J. Nardi

"The greatest predator ever known": The Golden Path and Political Philosophy as Ecology

Michael Phillips

He Who Controls Knowledge Controls the Universe: Leto II and the Golden Path

Caroline Anne Womack

Part II. History and Religion

Frank Herbert's Byzantium: ­Medieval-Futurism and the Princess Historians Irulan and Anna Komnene

Maximilian Lau

Beside the Sand Dunes: Arab Futurism, Faith, and the Fremen of Dune

R. Ali

"A critical moment": The O.C. Bible in the Awakening of Paul Atreides

N. Trevor Brierly

Part III. Biology and Ecology

Locations of Deviance: A Eugenics Reading of Dune

Leigha High McReynolds

From Taming Sand Dunes to Planetary Ecology: Historical Perspectives on Environmental Thought and Politics in the Dune Saga

Paul Reef

Shifting Sands: Heroes, Power, and the Environment in the Dune Saga

Willow Wilson DiPasquale

Part IV. Philosophy, Choice, and Ethics

The Sands of Time: Dune and the Philosophy of Time

Nathaniel Goldberg

The Choices of Muad'Dib: Goods, Traditions, and Practices in the Dune Saga

Jeffery L. Nicholas

"I suggest you may be human": Humanity and Human Action in Dune

Curtis A. Weyant

Belief Is the ­Mind-Killer: The Bene Gesserit's Transcendental Pragmatism

Kevin Williams

Appendix: Bibliography of Scholarship

Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly

About the Contributors

Index